Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps if Deputy Eamon Ryan's party had more than two Members, there would be more disagreements within his party group. I can assure him that when one has 70 public representatives, or whatever the number is now, there will always be a degree of disagreement among members, and as somebody who does not lead with an iron fist, I allow for it. Sometimes one has to allow for people to have differences of opinion within political parties, but the decisions we make will always be the ones that are in the best interests of all the people and not any section of the people or any particular constituency.

The Minister of State, Deputy John Paul Phelan, will bring forward proposals on directly elected mayors in this session. The rough idea at the moment is to hold plebiscites in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford to ask the people if they would like to have a directly elected mayor.

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